Word.ws English Dictionary

till

/tɪl/

till preposition: until; to, up to; as late as (a given time).

Preposition

till

  1. Until; to, up to; as late as (a given time).
    • She stayed till the very end.
    • I have to work till eight o'clock tonight.
  2. Before (a certain time or event).
    • It's twenty till two. (1:40)
    • Is that the town-clock striking? / I think that it is to-night / My fever will reach its crisis, / There are long hours yet till light.1880, A. T. Fullerton, “Fever”, in Littell's Living Age, volume 147, page 578
  3. (dialectal, obsolete) To, up to (physically).
    • They led him till his tent
    • She, poor bird, as all forlorn / Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn / And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, / To to hear it was great pity.1599, William Shakespeare (attributed), The Passionate Pilgrim
  4. (dialectal, obsolete) To, toward (in attitude).
    • "Well, Georgey," said he, "and soa you're leaving t'ould hoose at last?" - "Heigh, Johnny, my lad, I'm forced tull it; for that damned Boggart torments us soa, we can neither rest neet nor day for't."1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 307
    • "Here's at you old hoss!" hiccupped I, with a friendly pitch in the way of a nod at Rice.
      "Go it, young grampus, that's me! Here's till ye, my infant progidy!" replied he, as he clinked his glass against mine.1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, page 20
  5. (dialectal) So that (something may happen).
    • 1953?, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
      VLADIMIR: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.

Conjunction

till

  1. Until, until the time that.
    • Maybe you can, maybe you can't: you won't know till you try.
    • I charge you, O ye daughters of Ierusalem, by the Roes, and by the hindes of the field, that ye stirre not vp, nor awake my loue, till she please.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Song of Solomon 2:7
    Synonyms:
    'til, until, unto, while, whilom

Noun (1)

till (plural tills)

  1. (UK) A cash register.
    • I got most of the money to pay for all this by stealing. It was very wrong. Today I'm so finickity that I fired one of my staff for nicking twenty-pence worth of curtain hangers from Barkers because he couldn't be bothered to wait at the till queue.2005, Michael Winner, Winner Takes All, →ISBN, page 11
  2. A removable box within a cash register containing the money.
    • Pull all the tills and lock them in the safe.
    • When you've finished serving that customer could you jump off please? We need to take the till.
  3. The contents of a cash register, for example at the beginning or end of the day or of a cashier's shift.
    • My count of my till was 30 dollars short.
  4. A cash drawer in a bank, used by a teller.
  5. (obsolete) A tray or drawer in a chest.

Verb

till (third-person singular simple present tills, present participle tilling, simple past and past participle tilled)

  1. (transitive) To develop so as to improve or prepare for usage; to cultivate (said of knowledge, virtue, mind etc.).
  2. (transitive) To work or cultivate or plough (soil); to prepare for growing vegetation and crops.
    • Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 3:23
  3. (intransitive) To cultivate soil.
  4. (obsolete) To prepare; to get.
    • Nor knowes a trappe nor snare to till1614, William Browne, The Shepherd's Pipe

Noun (2)

till

  1. glacial drift consisting of a mixture of clay, sand, pebbles and boulders
  2. (dialectal) manure or other material used to fertilize land

Noun (3)

till (plural tills)

  1. A vetch; a tare.

Proper noun capitalized: Till

Till (countable and uncountable, plural Tills)

  1. (uncountable) A river in Northumberland, England, tributary to the Tweed.
    • Tweed says to Till:
      "What gars ye rin sae still ?"
      Till says to Tweed:
      "Tho ye rin wi' speed
      And I rin slaw
      Whar ye droon ae man,Traditional saying
  2. (uncountable) A river in Wiltshire, England.
  3. (uncountable) A river in Lincolnshire, England.
  4. (countable) A surname.
    • Technically speaking, it’s Lucas Till, the actor playing Tripp, who is far too old to be riding a school bus, not his character in Monster Trucks, who is written as a 16-year-old, maybe 17 tops. But Till does not look 16, nor 17, nor even 18.2017 January 12, Jesse Hassenger, “A literal monster truck is far from the stupidest thing about Monster Trucks”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 27 Jan 2017
    • “How to hide, survive and use the urban environment as a sanctuary was a challenge but the soldiers adapted to the real-life challenges,” ETG Commander Col. Toby Till explained.2023 October 26, Rojoef Manuel, “British Army Trials Situational Awareness Technologies in Urban Warfare Training”, in The Defense Post, archived from the original on 17 Jul 2024

till meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Telugu

till in Hindi

until
... तक ... tak, पर्यंत paryant

till in Tamil

until
வரை varai, வரைக்கும் varaikkum

till in Urdu

until
... تک ... tak

till in Telugu

until
దాకా dākā, వరకు varaku
More languagesFewer languages
till in Arabic
حَتَّى ḥattā, إِلَى أَنّ ʔilā ʔann, رَيْثَمَا rayṯamā, حَرَثَ ḥaraṯa
till in Malay
hingga
till in Persian
تا tâ

Examples of till in a sentence

  • Similar sentiments will recur to everyone familiar with his writings all through them till the very end.1854, Prof. John Wilson, The Genius and Character of Burns, page 194:
  • The line was authorised on June 23, 1864, but not opened till July 11, 1881.1946 May and June, G. A. Sekon, “L.B.S.C.R. West Coast Section—3”, in Railway Magazine, page 148:
  • While the PA has not always seen eye-to-eye with US foreign policy, its survival remained, till recently, a top American priority.2019 March 14, Ramzy Baroud, “Chasing mirages: What are Palestinians doing to combat ‘Deal of the Century’?”, in Ma'an News, archived from...
  • If you thought Wytrzyszczka was a mouthful, wait till you try saying Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.2024 December 4, “This place in NZ has such a long name that most people can't pronounce it”, in Times of India, archived from the original...

All 40 example sentences with till

Synonyms of till

All synonyms of till

Forms of till

Preposition
alternative form (nonstandard)'til
alternative form (nonstandard)til
Noun
pluraltills
Verb
third-person singular presenttills
present participletilling
past participletilled
pasttilled
Proper noun
pluralTills

Origin of till

From Middle English til, from Northern Old English til, from or akin to Old Norse til (“to, till”); both from Proto-Germanic *til (“to, toward”), from Proto-Germanic *tilą (“planned point in time”). Not a contraction of until; rather, until comes from till with the prefix un- (“against; toward; up to”) also found in unto. Cognate with Old Frisian til (“to, till”), Danish til (“to”), Swedish till (“to, till”), Icelandic til (“to, till”). Also related to Old English til (“good”), German Ziel (“goal”), Gothic 𐍄𐌹𐌻 (til, “something fitting or suitable”).

From Middle English tylle (“till”), possibly from Middle English tillen (“to draw”) from Old English *tyllan (“to draw, attract”) (as in betyllan (“to lure, decoy”) and fortyllan (“to draw away”); related to *tollian > Middle English tollen). Cognate with Albanian ndjell (“to lure, attract”). Alternatively, Middle English tylle is from Anglo-Norman tylle (“compartment”), from Old French tille (“compartment, shelter on a ship”), from Old Norse þilja (“plank”).

From Middle English tilyen, from Old English tilian.

Words formed from till

Phrases with till

6 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with till

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about till

What does till mean?
Till means until; to, up to; as late as (a given time).
What is till in Hindi?
Till in Hindi is ... तक (... tak), पर्यंत (paryant). See Till meaning in Hindi.
How do you use till in a sentence?
Similar sentiments will recur to everyone familiar with his writings all through them till the very end.
What part of speech is till?
Till can be a preposition, a conjunction, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce till?
Till is pronounced /tɪl/.

Words near till in the dictionary

  1. tilisolol
  2. tilivallin
  3. tilivalline
  4. tilka
  5. tilkas
  6. till
  7. till all hours
  8. till date
  9. till death do us part
  10. till death us do part
  11. till doomsday

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: till (page history and authors); Till (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-till.ogg.

Cite this entry: “till.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/till. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.